ISO 100, aperture F/7.1, shutter speed 1/25-sec, focal length 29mm, handheld, Canon 60D with a 17-40mm Canon F/4 L series lens. This is one of three different setups (cropped for display) that were turned in for cover consideration for Hemmings Muscle Machines. Photos by author.

It’s about 9:30 p.m. and it’s dark… real dark… can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-own-face cliché dark. Yet I’m firing away in an effort to complete a multi-car feature and cover photo shoot that began a few hours before.

The subject vehicles are two priceless examples of drag racing history, and I’m trying to do them justice in photos while providing something just a little different style-wise, if I can pull it off.

Here’s a little history. The first car is the 1963 Z11 Impala Old Reliable IV that was driven by Dave Strickler and wrenched on by Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, and the second is Bill Faubel’s 1964 Dodge 330 Hemi-Honker, also “tuned” by Jenkins. Both are owned by Don Fezell, a collector and drag racer from Western Pennsylvania.

This photo shoot was an important one that was a long time in coming, so I wanted to make the most of it. We originally planned to photograph the cars last November, but Mother Nature wouldn’t hear of it, and decided to dump copious amounts of snow on our area until mid-April. We started to plan again, and then the April showers that were supposed to bring May flowers actually arrived in May and hung around until partway through June. In July, we finally got our schedules and the weather to agree on the same day.

ISO 100, aperture F/22, shutter speed ½-sec, focal length 37mm, tripod. Just to give you an idea of why I decided to use off-camera flashes later in the shoot, here is a side shot using only available daylight. Notice the flat, white, sky and the overall low contrast of the scene.

I had the location chosen back in November and secured the permission I needed, since it was private property. I remained a little concerned, however, because it is an asphalt plant with large piles of aggregate, which make great backgrounds but can change drastically in size and location in a day’s time. That man-made mountain of gray stones you planned to shoot in front of on Monday could easily be gone on Tuesday. And if it rained, all of it could be reduced to a mud bog.

To allay my trepidation, I drove over to the location the night before the shoot with a handheld point-and-shoot to survey the situation, choose the exact spot, take some test photos using my own vehicle and hope that the mountain was still there the next day.

The following evening, I met Don Fezell and Paul Swartzlander, who maintains the cars in the collection, to start the shoot. All went well, but knowing that it was a two-car feature shoot with multiple cover setups meant that it was almost like shooting two-and-a-half features at once, so time was of the essence.

At Don’s shop, we did all the overall engine and interior photos, as well as the detail photos first. Then Don and Paul loaded the two cars into the trailer to head out to the location across town.

The hills of gravel stayed put, as I’d hoped they would. Our only problem was that even though we still had a few more hours of daylight, the quality of it was starting to flatten out, so I decided to shoot the cars in natural light and then also add various applications of flash fill from multiple off-camera flashes to make the cars pop.

ISO 100, aperture F/11, shutter speed 1/50-sec, focal length 36mm, tripod. Here is the exact same setup just a few moments later using two off-camera remote flashes. Note the colors of the car are more intense. Since the flashes are properly lighting the car via the aperture I set manually, I could underexpose the background to make it darker by setting the shutter speed manually. With the gravel darker, the car really pops off of it, and the darkened sky reveals the colors and textures that were already there.

Of course this takes more time, since every car is different and you have to keep moving the flashes around and shooting to get the light just where you want it. Knowing that this would be a possibility, I took my 13-year-old son, Tommy, with me on the shoot to assist with resetting the flashes, which saved a great deal of time.

We got all the body photos finished and started on the cover setups of which we did three, so one could be chosen from them. I knew that I wanted some flash for the cover shots, and I wanted to darken and add more color to the sky by underexposing the background ambient light.

One issue that I don’t normally have to deal with is the necessity to work off a ladder in fading daylight. Yet I had to do it this time because there were two cars, both of which could be seen better when the photo was taken from on high. The problem for me is that working with a ladder and tripod can be tedious, and I really didn’t have time for that now, and the tripod height never seems to be enough to get the shots I want.

ISO 100, aperture F/9, shutter speed 3.2-sec, focal length 17mm, handheld, cropped for display. My bright idea (pun intended) to shoot at a very slow shutter speed worked great to bring up the sky just a bit, but failed when it got too dark for the autofocus to operate properly and I tried to use the parking lights as focus point. In revealing the camera shake induced by the 3.2-second shutter speed, both cars look like small fires have broken out where the parking lamps should be.

While the light was still good, the staggered front ¾ shots with mostly sky in the background worked well. For the last setup, we moved to the background where the gravel was higher, and it was getting quite dark. I wanted to light the cars with the flashes, as I had been, but I didn’t want the background to go completely black if I could avoid it. I wanted to retain some semblance of a dark yet visible sky to add dimension to the photos.

I surmised that since the cars would be lit completely by the flashes, I could probably get away with a very slow shutter speed, (much slower than I’d normally consider trying while holding the camera by hand) to bring up the background ambient light and show some sky. However, the cars would not reveal any camera shake, since the flash fires in a fraction of second regardless of the shutter speed.

It worked quite well…until it got too dark for the camera to autofocus on its own. (Though the Canon 60D does have a focus assist light, it only works when the built-in flash is popped up. When shooting with off-camera flash, the remote flash trigger is mounted on the camera’s hot shoe, so the built-in flash cannot be popped up.)

Okay, next trick. I had Don turn on the parking lights so that the camera would have a light source upon which to focus. Problem was, the multi-second shutter speed now revealed itself in the parking lights making them resemble small flames coming out of the front end of each car. Duh, I should have thought of that.

ISO 100, aperture F/9, shutter speed 3.2-sec, focal length 17mm, handheld, cropped for display. Using the penlight on my keychain to, momentarily, throw light onto a driver-side headlight of the Impala so the camera could gain a focus point, worked well. With the parking lights off, despite using the same very long shutter speed, no camera shake is visible on the cars because they are lit only by the flashes.

The fix? I pulled my car keys out of my pocket and handed them to Paul. I asked Don to turn off the parking lights and asked Paul to shine the penlight on my keychain onto the leading headlight of the Impala. I locked in the focus, had Paul step back out of the frame and fired away. It worked perfectly. We did it a few more times and completed the shoot.

Thanks to a team effort and patience, we got the feature photos and the cover we needed, and you can check them out in the October 2014 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.

That’s a greatly-detailed description, and with before and after shots and everything! Nice work, Thomas! If you would have had a couple of extra folks with you, you could have had one person scunch (is that a word?) down in the front seat of each car and you could have YELLED when the shutter snapped. They could have then just quickly popped the parking lights on in each car for a half-a-second to light them up but not blow them out. I do that at almost every photo shoot for interiors. People sometimes wonder why all of the lights and lamps aren’t blown out from 2-3 second exposures. It’s because I set up with the light switches by me (or, remote lamp controls) and set the exposure without the lights on, so as soon as the shutter goes off I flash the lights on and off; giving a great sense of the lights being on without them being blown out.

Are you using Canon flashes, too? Just wondering, you didn’t mention what sort of strobes you used.

Sorry, that was way too long. Thanks for a fantastic behind-the-scenes look! You guys are the best. And, I hope you paid your son the $300 assistant fee that you put on your expense account.. (KIDDING!)

Excellent idea. I’ve done that in the past with taillights and headlights, but that night, I just didn’t think of it.
Though I have a Canon 550EX that I use for on-camera flash, for the remotes I use old Sunpak 433D flashes because they allow me full manual control to reduce flash output as needed with the low-buck wireless triggers that I bought on Amazon. The 433Ds can be for Nikon, Minolta or Canon. It doesn’t matter because they are being fired by the trigger anyway. I have some Sunpak 433AF flashes, but since they don’t have manual control, they fire at full power all the time. I also use my old Vivitar 285HV that I bought in 1993 when I first started in the business and was using a Pentax K1000. I like the idea of reusing vintage equipment when it’s practical to get the desired result.

Very cool! When I got my copy of the mag I thought the photo was taken on a set. You’re more than welcome to use my front yard if you ever shoot that 330 again (the dripping Chevy would kill my grass) Good job Thomas!

2 cars i remember from York US30 dragway/airport. back in the day when you could walk up and talk to the driver/crew/owner. or look the car over and under the hood without getting run off. great photos. thanks

Hi jim, while I can’t add anything to the actual story (camera’s slay me, and I don’t get HMM) I will say, at any recent drag race event, with a few exceptions, I’ve had the warmest welcomes from the drivers and owners, but can’t really allow you in the pit because of liability concerns. I have seen some guys break that rule for children, however,

Yes, it is. It’s one of those things that’s difficult to avoid with the changing temperature and humidity at that time of night. You can wipe it off, but many times it will just streak and look worse. Then by the time you get back to the camera, it has reformed anyway. For this shoot, I had to just accept it for what it was and leave it there. (Just my luck, the flash makes it even more obvious.)

Hi Tom, Thank you for confirming that it was dew. To me the presence of the dew only add’s to the uniqueness of the photo. I live in NC and on most nights we always get a good dew and car roofs and hoods are one of the first places you can see it. Thanks again for your part in producing a great magazine for us car nuts.

It appears that the Chevy hood says, “Aluminum, Please Touch”. I used a magnifying glass on my copy of the magazine, and the computer screen to check, and I’m sure that is what it says. I find that strange, because Pontiacs with aluminum parts usually said “Aluminum, Hands Off’!

In Jenkins’ speak it was “go ahead and see what happens”. You didn’t want to touch the aluminum panels of the day as they were rather fragile. Part of the problem was that shorter, younger fans not only couldn’t read but weren’t tall enough to see it anyway! I recall seeing Nicholson’s ’63 and the fenders and bumper were dented up pretty good!

The owner, Don, told me that Bill told him it was reverse psychology. Every time you tell people not to touch something the first thing they do is touch it to find out why. He hoped that telling people to touch it would make them not touch it. Not sure how well it worked, but it made for good conversation.

You want to see the most outrageous wheelie you’ve ever seen? And it’s driven by Don Fezell, owner of these two fine and historic vehicles. Here’s Don in his CJ Mustang at the 2014 NHRA U.S. Nationals at Indy:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5H8CuqM9FE

Think that the lens may be the important part here. No doubt the Canon 60D is a good camera. But that Canon 17-40 L is a premium lens ( ‘L’ series) and IMO, the lens is just as important, if not more important than the camera body.

The easiest answer is that I’m short, so I wanted the vari-angle LCD screen so I can hold the camera up high when I need to and still see what I’m trying to shoot. It also helps when shooting at odd angles.

Of course budget plays into it as well. Since the Canon pro cameras are unobtainium for me due to price, I thought the newer 6D with the full frame sensor would be great, but that was too expensive for my budget as well.

I have used –D series cameras going back to the 10D and have always been able to get what I needed out of them. They sort of bridge the consumer cameras and the pro cameras feature-wise and I do all of my shooting in the manual modes.

Like Lesmore49 points out, the lenses are important. Again, price plays into it. I’ve used the F/2.8 Canon L series lenses and loved the results, but you have to pay for that quality. The F/4 17-40mm L and the F/4 70-200mm L that I bought retain high quality at a lower price and I have been happy with them, despite that fact that I lose the light gathering capability of the F/2.8 aperture. The 70-200mm F/4 is also smaller and lighter than the 2.8 and it has image stabilization. You can get a 2.8 with IS too, but it is way more expensive than the F/4.

Thanks very much for your comments. I’m glad that you liked the photos. I thought it was important to discuss what didn’t work along with what did. Sometimes the misfires can be more entertaining than the successes.

I just have to say that it was another of the fifty 63 Chevy Z11s, this one running out of Oak Tree Chevrolet that started my love of drag racing. I can’t remember who the match race was against that summer Sunday in 1963 at the old Westhampton Drag strip but that car just blew my 16 year old mind! The track is long gone but that maroon Chevy is still in my minds eye. Great article and pictures in HMM. Thanks